{"slug": "grok-4-5-is-xai-s-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock", "title": "Grok 4.5 Is xAI's Coding Comeback. The Price Is the Shock.", "summary": "XAI released Grok 4.5, achieving competitive coding benchmark scores at significantly lower pricing than rivals, positioning it as a cost-effective option for coding-agent routing. The model scored 83.3% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 and ranks #4 on Artificial Analysis's Intelligence Index, with pricing at $2 input and $6 output per million tokens.", "body_md": "Member-only story\n\n# Grok 4.5 Is xAI's Coding Comeback. The Price Is the Shock.\n\nThe comeback story is not a leaderboard crown. It is a cheaper path through the same kind of work.\n\nThat is why Grok 4.5 is the first xAI model release in a while that I would actually put into a coding-agent routing discussion. Not as a trophy model. Not as a clean replacement for GPT-5.5, Opus 4.8, or Fable 5. As the model that makes the premium coding stack defend its price.\n\nCursor’s launch chart puts Grok 4.5 at 83.3% on Terminal-Bench 2.1, 64.7% on SWE-Bench Pro, 62.0% on DeepSWE 1.0, and 78.0% on SWE-Bench Multilingual. Artificial Analysis ranks Grok 4.5 (high) #4 of 168 on its Intelligence Index, with a score of 54, 89.5 output tokens per second, and $2 input / $6 output pricing per million tokens. Its Coding Agent Index chart puts Grok Build + Grok 4.5 at 76, tied with Codex + GPT-5.5 xhigh and above Claude Code + Opus 4.8 max at 73.\n\nThat is the receipt. The interpretation is more interesting: xAI may finally have a model builders should route against.\n\nBefore I get into the numbers, the founder aside: I am Caspar Bannink. I write about AI model releases, agentic coding, and the kind of routing decision a builder has to make when a new model drops. I also build [HomeScout](https://homescout.io), an AI rental search product for Dublin renters. HomeScout is unrelated to Grok 4.5. I post…", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-is-xai-s-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock", "canonical_source": "https://pub.towardsai.net/grok-4-5-is-xais-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock-c801931d027a?source=rss----98111c9905da---4", "published_at": "2026-07-11 19:01:01+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-11 19:09:46.150661+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "large-language-models", "ai-products", "ai-tools", "ai-startups"], "entities": ["xAI", "Grok 4.5", "Cursor", "Artificial Analysis", "GPT-5.5", "Opus 4.8", "Fable 5", "Codex"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-is-xai-s-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-is-xai-s-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-is-xai-s-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/grok-4-5-is-xai-s-coding-comeback-the-price-is-the-shock.jsonld"}}